"What cracker is this...that deafes our ears/ With this abundance of superfluous breath?" -- William Shakespeare

July 19, 2007

The Evil That Was Moose

I’m in rather a nasty mood today, and I think I’ll take it out on Moose.

Why not? Payback is a Medevac, after all.

My last words to the heartless slag (before November of 2006, mind you) were: “Be that as it may, I love you.” Considering all the grief, woe and psychological agony she put me through, though, I honestly wish they’d been somewhat pithier.

“Fuck you, you arrogant, condescending trollop!”

“Eat shit and die, you pretentious ginch!”

Having said either would probably have lifted my spirits considerably (although not nearly so much as would have the simple act of spitting in her fucking face), and made the subsequent years of hell somewhat easier to endure. Unfortunately, love, as I’ve said before, is blind. In my case – as I’ve also said before – it’s also deaf and mentally retarded.

Even an off-the-cuff, “Git ta fuck, ye’ sassenach baw’bag!” delivered in tolerable – if imperfect -- Scots would have been better – and more appropriate – than my “Ochone! Ma’ very hert is sae sair scaithed, I maun lay me doun an’ dee frae wae!” reaction to the events of 3/16/89.

But hindsight, as the saying goes, is 20/20.

Not long ago, I was relating the sorry saga of my involvement with the wretched bizzem to a friend. Eventually, I reached the end of the tale and the matter of my “death.”

As I finished the story, I heard – and not for the first time -- the words: “She must never really have loved you.” When I asked why, I received the following reply: “She didn’t even send your mother a sympathy card.”

The first person to draw the same conclusion had said: “She didn’t send flowers for your grave.” I’ve given the matter some thought, and found myself in agreement with the two friends with whom I discussed it. I’ve also decided that were I to sum up the “essence” of “Moose, Mk III,” I could pick no better example.

The soulless quality of “Moose, Mk III” – whom I affectionately dubbed “The Thing on the Doorstep,” owing to the outcome of my Greensboro foray and my fondness for H.P. Lovecraft at the time -- is captured perfectly in both observations.

To this day, I have no idea of what ol’ Moose had taken to doing for shits and giggles by 1989. Kicking cats, drowning kittens and pulling the wings off flies all come to mind, but they’re merely guesses. It’s not at all difficult to imagine her going bag snatching on Halloween night, or knocking small children’s ice cream cones from their hands, either.

Yes, I’d have to opine that by this time, Moose had actually become evil. Evil, as in: horns, tail and pitchfork… Evil, as in: “Damien Thorn with tits and the seemingly supernatural ability to suck a golf ball through a garden hose.” Given this, I’m reasonably certain she’d taken to getting her jollies from human suffering, like any other garden-variety sadist.

Now this is pure conjecture on my part, but when I superimpose Moose, the Spawn of Satan over Moose, the drama queen, it occurs to me that she simply must have gotten some mileage and entertainment value out of my “death.” Tragedies and traumas don’t exactly grow on trees, right? Therefore, there’s little or no sense in letting one of suicide magnitude go to waste.

“Garmonbozia!” I can imagine her growling upon hearing the news.

When last I spoke with her, ol’ Moose mentioned that she’d felt a certain degree of guilt after hearing the greatly exaggerated rumor of my demise (if I may paraphrase Mark Twain). Having given the matter some thought, I’m inclined to believe it was top-to-bottom bullshit.

What else would one say when receiving a phone call from one’s psycho ex-boyfriend, whom one had previously believed to be pushin’ up daisies, feedin’ worms and engagin’ in all the other thrillin’ activities associated with takin’ the long dirt nap?

“Aw, shit! I thought you’d bought the farm!”

I don’t think so…

Guilt, my ass. My guess is that my period of (presumed) repose in the local skull orchard provided her with trauma-drama go leor. I simply can’t imagine her passing up a single opportunity to milk it for all it was worth. As she was a very beautiful young woman, I don’t imagine she ever needed resort to scoring a “sympathy fuck,” but a load of feigned “guilt” over a crazy-as-a-shithouse-rat ex who’d ostensibly greased himself would have been just the thing to stir the paternal/chivalrous instincts of potential victims.

It would also have provided an excuse for being “complex” (read: a complete horse’s ass), and the opportunity to be “mysterious” or “a woman with a past”: all the very meat and drink of drama queens from sea to oil-slicked sea.

Moose raises the back of her hand to her brow. Heaving a great sigh, she tilts her head backward and closes her eyes.

“Oh, Abelard!” says she, in a tremulous tone, “There is a deep, dark secret I must share with you!”

“What?” he asks, a look of concern in his otherwise bovine eyes.

“I – I – Oh! The horror!” she exclaims, turning away from him and lowering her head, “I cannot say! I must not say!”

“Duh, tell me!” he implores, wiping barbecue sauce from his face with his sleeve.

“It’s too much!” she sobs, burying her face in her hands (but looking out the corner of one eye to assess the effectiveness of the performance).

“Just tell me!” he says, putting down his Viewmaster and taking a step toward her.

Assuming the hand-to-brow pose yet again, she continues:

“I love you, Abelard van Gelding, but before you dare give me your heart, there is something you must know. Once, long ago, long before I met you, there was an unstable lad whose love for me went unrequited. I rebuffed his advances, Abelard, and he…he…”

(She heaves a tremendous sigh, ending in a sob)

“He took his own life! Oh, Abelard! To this very day, I blame myself!”

“It’s not your fault!” says he, his index finger wrestling with an especially tenacious booger, all the while.

As he rushes to take her into his arms, the toilet paper adhering to the sole of his shoe trails behind him like a knight’s pennon.

“But I feel as if it were!” she exclaims. “Now come and roger my guilt away, you big stud, you!”

Naturally, I made up that entire scene, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to discover that it isn’t far off the mark. Over the years, I’ve figured out quite a bit about this veritable princess of perpetual PMS, and most of the conclusions I’ve reached are unflattering, to say the very least.

I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that she got quite a laugh out of the letter I wrote her in ’89, as a matter of fact. Hell, I can easily imagine her and Sap #3 reading it aloud over and over again and howling with mirth, right before "sixty-nining" each other directly atop the stupid waste of time, energy, and emotion. That’s just the kind of girl she was.

I don’t know if she was still having her "lint trap" serviced by the same “Maytag man” with whom she was shacked up that March when the word of my “death” reached her ears. I honestly have no earthly idea. Were it so, though, then I can easily imagine her getting a good giggle out of it.

“Ohmigawd, Chester! Do you remember that psychotic dipshit I told you about? The one I was dating in high school? The one who wrote that hilarious letter? He actually went and offed himself! Can you believe that? What a pathetic fucktard! He really needs to get a life. Get it? Get a LIFE? Har har har!”

I can actually imagine all sorts of things about my favorite sociopathic, ball-busting harpy, come to think of it…